The response of faith of Romans 6 to
11 is an act.
I believe what the Word says.
I didn't know it, I didn't feel it,
I wasn't conscious that it happened, and yet
because God said it, I believe it.
And when a child of God goes to
God and says, I believe the record of
Scripture, I have been crucified with Christ, that
is an act.
As a result of that act, there is
an attitude.
The attitude comes from the act.
Because I believe that I was crucified, I
am one who is crucified.
That's a new attitude toward myself.
I am a liberated one.
And I get up every morning, and when
I look at myself in the mirror, I
say to myself, Dwight Soneko, you are liberated.
You don't have to serve sin today.
And every morning I tell myself that fact
over again.
That's what it is to die daily.
The fact that I look in the mirror
when I shave and say, you're liberated, you
don't have to serve sin today, doesn't mean
I'm crucifying myself.
I'm registering again the fact that I have
believed.
And this dying daily does not have to
do with establishing the fact.
It has to do with my attitude toward
the fact.
So Paul said, I die.
That was once and for all, that's finished.
But I consequently am one who is crucified,
and I just tell myself, remind myself, and
I live in the light of that attitude.
And when I live in the light of
that attitude, I am dying daily.
So we have the fact, we have the
faith, the response to the fact.
Now I'm moving into Romans chapter 8 to
get the force, or the power, by which
we live a Christian life.
And may I say to you young people,
and make it as plain as I know
how, the word of God does not give
us the responsibility of living a Christian life.
The word of God does not ask us
to live a Christian life.
The word of God asks us to let
another live his life through it.
I say to you that there is no
power in the new nature, there's no power
in the new capacity.
You cannot live a Christian life.
I would even say you can't live a
Christian life by yourself any more after you're
saved than you can before you're saved.
You can't do it.
You are charged with the responsibility to see
that you are living a Christian life.
So we have all the exhortations of the
New Testament to godliness, but the responsibility, the
wrath on you, is only to let another
do it.
And that's why Paul summarizes it so well
in Galatians 2.20, I have been crucified
with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I
but Christ liveth in me.
And I like to define the Christian life
this way.
The Christian life is the life of Christ
lived in me and through me by the
Holy Spirit.
The Christian life is the life of Christ
lived in me and through me by the
Holy Spirit.
I can't live a Christian life even though
I have been crucified with Christ.
Another has to do it through me, and
the power or the force for the sake
of alliteration is developed in Romans 8.
There is therefore now no judgment to them
who are in Christ Jesus, for the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
hath made me free from the law of
sin and death.
The principle or the law or the rule
of the Spirit who is life has freed
me from being ruled by the principle of
sin and death.
Now, Paul in verse 3 of Romans 8
tells us why a believer cannot live a
Christian life.
What the law could not do in that
it was weak because it depended on the
flesh.
The weakness of the law was not the
law.
The law perfectly revealed the holiness of God.
The law revealed the demands that a holy,
righteous God makes on those who would live
in fellowship with himself.
No man living under the Mosaic law was
endowed as to what he should do, how
he should act, how he should dress, what
was right and what was wrong.
The law wasn't obscure in those points.
It was very, very specific.
The law, Paul says, was holy and just
and good.
The law was holy in that it revealed
the holiness of God.
It was just in that it passed a
just sentence upon those who do not conform
to the law.
The law was good in that it did
that which God designed the law to do,
to reveal his holiness, to reveal the kind
of life God expects of those who walk
in fellowship with himself.
The weakness of the law was not in
the law.
The weakness was in those to whom the
law was given, for the law depended on
the power of the flesh for its fulfillment,
and there was no power in the flesh.
Therefore, no one living under the law could
keep the law.
Therefore, the law passed its just sentence upon
all because they violated the holiness revealed in
the law.
Now, that's just all in Paul's mind when
he says the law was weak, not because
of what it was in itself, but because
it depended on men who are characterized as
flesh, and the flesh is weak.
So what did God do?
God sent his own Son in the likeness
of sinful flesh, and for sin judged sin
in the flesh.
That is, the death of Christ pronounced judgment
on the flesh, or on the sin nature,
by the old capacity, and liberated the individual
from being ruled by that old capacity that
the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled
in us who walk not after the flesh,
but walk after the Spirit.
Here Paul introduces us to a teaching that
is so vital, walking by the Spirit.
Here I am, a child of God, with
two capacities.
The capacity to sin and the capacity to
do righteousness.
Now, I think one of the best illustrations
of this we find in looking at an
elevator.
An elevator weighs several tons, and you put
some well-fed people in it, it weighs
a lot more.
And there's no power in that elevator to
go from the ground floor to the top
floor of the building.
No power in that elevator whatsoever.
And you know that.
And you know that elevator can't take you
by itself to the top floor.
But you get in that elevator, and you
push the button for the top floor, and
it goes up.
Why?
Not because the elevator has power in itself,
but because a new power lifts that elevator
from the ground floor to the top of
the building.
You sever that cable that connects the winch
to the elevator, and down it'll go.
It'll go down every time.
But it doesn't go down because a new
power supersedes the law of gravity that operates
it.
Or go with me out to Love Field.
You stand alongside one of those 747s, and
there it goes, five stories or so up
into the air or more.
Gigantic thing.
And every speck of gray matter in your
head says, something as big as that can't
fly.
The law of gravity says that mass of
metal, that can of sardines, cannot get off
the ground.
But you give your ticket to the counter
agent, you walk on the ramp, and you
sit down, you buckle your seat, and in
a few minutes you're zooming up into the
wild blue young.
Why?
Because the law of gravity doesn't operate.
Every once in a while we see that
the law of gravity does operate.
But the law of gravity is superseded by
a new law.
A law that I don't understand, but thank
the Lord that the engineers who designed the
planes understand those laws of aerodynamic.
And the law of aerodynamic supersedes the law
of gravity.
But when that law of aerodynamic does not
operate, the law of gravity takes over, and
down it comes.
Now you see, there are two laws in
operation in that elevator.
The law of gravity that pulls it down,
and the new law that lifts it up.
And whether it goes down or up depends
on which law it's operating by.
And Paul is teaching us exactly that thing
when he tells us, in every child of
God there are two laws operating.
The law of sin and death, the law
of life by the Spirit.
And when one is operating by the old
law, he sins.
And when one operates by the law of
life in Christ by the Spirit of God,
righteousnesses are the product of the operation of
that law.
And Paul calls that a walking by the
Spirit, Romans 8.4. Walking by the Spirit.
Now, in my text it's translated walking after
the Spirit.
And the word after suggests following an example,
following a pattern that's set out.
And if you take Christ as your example,
or take the Holy Spirit as your example,
then you are assuming obligation to live the
Christian life.
But that's not the best translation of this
text, because Christ, while he is an example
according to 1 Peter, that does not transfer
the responsibility of living the Christian life to
us.
And a good translation of this would be,
who walk by means of the Spirit.
Galatians chapter 5 and verse 16.
This I say then, you be continually walking.
It's a present tense in the original text,
and it signifies continuous, progressive action.
You be continually walking, literally, by means of
the Spirit.
By means of the Spirit.
I have a very good friend, and one
of my elders in my church stepped on
a landmine in the Korean War, and his
right leg was blown off, blown off just
below the knee.
And he walked with the use of an
artificial limb.
Most people know that he's even lost a
limb.
He plays tennis, he goes skiing up in
Colorado.
There's a lot of things that I can't
do with two perfectly good legs.
He's adapted to his loss tremendously.
But this last Christmas time, he had taken
his family up to Colorado, and they were
skiing, and he got his skis crossed up
on a slope, and he had a fall,
and he broke the stump of his leg.
They took him in the hospital.
The doctor scratched their head and said, well,
we don't know what to do with an
amputee who's broken his stump skiing.
We've never had a case like this before.
They flew him out to the old orthopedic
man who had treated him after he lost
his limb originally, and he set what was
left of his leg, the stump, and put
it in a cast and sent him back
to Dallas.
And when I saw Billy, he was walking
with a crutch.
He had no leg on which to stand,
quite literally, didn't have a leg to stand
on, and he had no cast on which
he could stand.
He just had an empty pant leg.
Yet here he was, coming to church and
assuming all his business and his obligations in
the church to his family, walking by means
of a crutch.
If he had taken that crutch away, he'd
have gone down in a heap.
He couldn't stand by himself, but he walked
by means of a crutch, consciously depending on
that crutch for every step that he took.
That's what Paul is teaching in Galatians 5
.16. And if I can put it this
way, when it comes to living the Christian
life, you don't have a leg to stand
on, and if you try to walk, you
will go down in a heap.
But you have been given one upon whom
you can lean.
And the Spirit of God, when you lean
on him, can support you so that you
can walk so as to please him.
And walking by means of the Spirit means
to live in conscious dependence upon the support
that there is in the Holy Spirit, so
that you are kept from falling because of
the strength of the Spirit.
In spite of your weakness, the weakness of
the flesh, you are kept from falling into
sin because of the strength of the Spirit.
I have been crucified with Christ.
I accept that fact and count myself as
one who has been liberated from sin.
But when I walk, I do not walk
as one who has power of himself.
I walk in conscious dependence upon the Holy
Spirit of God.
And that's the essence of Paul's doctrine, and
how true Philippians 4.13 is.
For some strange reason, we like to apply
4.13 particularly to finances, because that's in
the context later.
But when Paul says, I can do all
things through Christ, which fact strengthens me?
He's saying that we can lean upon the
power of Almighty God with the confidence that
he will not let us down.
Our crutch will not break.
That's what it is, walking by the Spirit.
Along with the doctrine of walking by the
Spirit, I want you to turn to Ephesians
5.18. Paul writes, Be not drunk with
wine wherein is excess, but be filled with
the Spirit.
Now, I might well assume from your previous
training you are very familiar with these doctrines
of the Spirit.
But I'm afraid to assume anything, even though
I know you know it, and I want
the privilege of treating you as though you've
never heard it before, and we're introducing it
to you for the first time.
I know it's not true, but I want
to do it anyway.
It's good to be reminded of these things.
Frequently there is confusion between three of the
works of the Spirit.
The baptizing work, the indwelling work, and the
filling work.
The baptizing work, we defined it many times
in the course of our talks with you,
is defined in 1 Corinthians 12.13. It
is the sovereign work of the Spirit of
God that joins a believer as a living
member of the body of which Jesus Christ
is the head.
A favorite expression of the Apostle Paul is
the phrase, In Christ Jesus.
How did I get into that exalted position?
I was baptized into it.
I was placed in that body.
I was identified with Christ by the baptizing
work of the Holy Spirit.
The second work we refer to is the
indwelling work of the Spirit.
In the Old Testament, God chose to occupy
the tabernacle and later the temple.
He used the tabernacle and the temple as
that place from which he manifested his glory
and through which he demonstrated his presence.
God dwelt in the tabernacle or the temple
in Israel.
In the New Testament, God is fashioning a
new temple.
Described in Ephesians 21 and 22, The body
groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord,
in whom ye are builded together for inhabitation
of God through the Spirit.
All believers corporately form the temple in which
God dwells today, and individual believers as a
part of that temple are indwelt by the
Spirit of God.
The very moment one accepts Christ as a
personal Savior, he is baptized experientially into the
body.
The very moment one accepts Christ as a
personal Savior, he is indwelt by the Holy
Spirit of God.
This work of the Spirit of God was
prophesied by our Lord in John 16, verse
7.
I tell you the truth, it is expedient
for you that I go away.
For if I go not away, the Comforter
will not come unto you.
But if I depart, I will send him
unto you.
John 14, 16.
I will pray the Father, and he shall
give you another Comforter, that he may abide
with you forever, even the Spirit of truth,
whom the world cannot receive, because the sea
is not near the north end.
But ye know him, for he dwelleth with
you."
He dwelleth with you.
That was the relationship of the Holy Spirit
to believers in the Old Testament.
He dwelt alongside of them to be their
enablement, to be their crutch, to be their
power.
He dwells now with you, and he shall
be in you.
He shall be in you.
The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament was
an external crutch.
The Holy Spirit in the New Testament is
an internal crutch.
I don't know how to illustrate this.
If I take my friend Billy, who broke
his leg, when I talk about him walking
by means of a crutch, that's external.
Now suppose I could say that the surgeon
planted a new bone inside Billy, and he
walked by that new bone instead of by
the old broken one.
Then you would have an internal support.
But in the Old Testament, the Spirit of
God dwelt with them, and Christ prophesied, He
will be in you.
And on the day of Pentecost, in Acts
chapter 2, the Holy Spirit of God came
to move into the body of believers and
into individual believers, and the bodies of believers
became his temple.
And we are indwelled.
That's why Paul can write 1 Corinthians 6
.19, Know ye not that ye are the
temple of the Holy Spirit that dwelleth in
you?
That's the indwelling work.
I have been baptized at once and for
all.
I am indwelled.
That is a permanent indwelling, because Christ said
he'll abide forever.
Those are some of the works of the
Spirit to believers that have to do with
their position.
But when we come to Ephesians chapter 5,
we have to do with a work of
the Spirit in relation to their experience, in
relation to their daily life, where Paul says,
Be not drunk with wine, but be filled
with the Spirit.
Now, the filling of the Spirit is not
the same as the indwelling.
And when we use the word filled, we
think of a vessel that is empty, and
we're thinking of pouring something into that empty
vessel until what is poured into it comes
up to the top.
Filled, in that sense.
That's why there's so much confusion between the
indwelling and the filling.
The Spirit indwells me, and in that sense
he fills up what was an empty void
before.
And so a lot of people have missed
the distinction between the indwelling and the filling.
They do the same thing.
But Paul has an entirely different idea when
he says, Be not drunk with wine, wherein
is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.
And he, in order to teach us what
the filling of the Spirit is that we
don't know anything about, he contrasts it with
drunkenness with which we are familiar, I trust
by observation only.
Don't be drunk with wine.
Now, what happens when a man is drunk
with wine?
The man who is drunk is brought under
the influence of, or the control of, a
force or a power apart from himself.
He's brought under the influence or power of
a force outside of himself.
And when a man is drunk, everything about
him changes.
He might be a Mickey Mouse kind of
a little guy when he's sober, and when
he's drunk he wants to fight the world.
He's willing to pick out the biggest guy
and take him on.
He's so timid he wouldn't even sing in
his own shower with the door closed.
When he's drunk he wants to stand in
the street corner and sing Oh Solo Mio
and wake up everybody in the block.
When he's sober he can walk in a
straight line, and when he's drunk he can't.
Bangers all over the place.
Everything about him has changed.
Why?
He is being controlled by another, and drunkenness
or filling with wine is contrasted with filling
of the Spirit.
To be filled with the Spirit is to
be controlled by the Holy Spirit, just as
to be filled with wine or drunkenness is
to be controlled by wine.
This word filled, it was used by the
Greeks.
It normally had to do with movement or
motion.
When they talked about filling the sails of
a ship, with wind, they weren't thinking of
just empty sails that fill it out.
They were thinking of the resultant movement that
came because the sails were filled with the
wind.
What was filled with the wind moved.
Filling, then, has to do with being possessed
or controlled by the Holy Spirit so that
our course of life or course of conduct
is under his control, under his authority.
Do not be brought under the influence or
control of wine, but you be under the
influence or control by the Holy Spirit.
Now the question comes, how is one filled
with the Spirit?
How men thinking and writing on this have
complicated this simple teaching.
From what we said in last hour, you
ought to come up with the answer with
no help at all.
A man is not brought under the influence
of wine by painting a bottle and putting
on a shelf and looking at it.
The only way he gets drunk with wine
is to voluntarily submit to it by imbribing
it.
And now this takes us back to Romans
6, the word yield.
A man is not under control of the
Spirit of God until he submits himself to
the Spirit's control.
But this word yield or present.
Myself, I don't like to use the term
yielding, because when we use the English word
yield, we use it of something we do
unwillingly because we're overpowered by it.
That's what the word yield suggests.
And I don't know, something in the back
of my neck stands up every time I
come to an intersection and I see the
triangular sign that says yield.
So you've got to give up your right.
And everything that's natural in me says, I
don't want to give up my right, why
shouldn't he yield to me?
But I'm overpowered and overmastered, so I do
what the sign says.
It suggests reluctance.
And the word I like to use is
the word present.
The word present instead of the word yield.
And I think that's closer to the Greek
text.
So all through Romans 6, if you're using
a text that has yield, yield, yield, it
suggests that somebody's standing over you with a
club ready to bash you if you don't.
Change it to the word present, and remember
again that the word present was the word
that was used at a wedding when the
hand of the bride was put into the
hand of the bridegroom.
And when he took her hand that was
put in here, when she presented herself to
him, he could say, you are mine.
When she presented herself to him, she, because
of her love and devotion, was voluntarily submitting
to his authority.
It was her love that caused her to
set aside her independence and bring her into
submission to a new head.
And when Paul uses the word present in
Romans 6 and Romans 12, he is saying
that your response to the love of the
Lord Jesus Christ for you ought to lead
you to present yourself to him, to put
yourself under his headship, under his control, under
his authority.
And that presentation makes possible his control.
The voluntary submission of the child of God
to the Spirit of God makes it possible
for the Spirit of God to fill or
to control him.
There is one baptism, there is one indwelling.
Neither of these are ever repeated, but there
ought to be innumerable fillings in which the
child of God, over and over, is consciously
submitting himself to the Spirit's direction and the
Spirit's control in his life.
The Spirit of God will never rule an
unwilling subject.
The Spirit of God will not enforce his
will on the child of God.
The Spirit of God will not live the
life of Christ through the child of God
apart from the consent of the child of
God.
A hymn that we sing, and have become
so familiar with it we've lost its punch,
is the hymn, Moment by Moment I'm Kept
in His Love.
The secret of the Christian life is to
believe something.
I have been crucified with Christ.
And then, moment by moment, to walk in
conscious dependence on the Spirit of God as
my strength so that the Spirit of God,
moment by moment, can live his life through
me.
I believe that is the great lesson in
Romans chapter 8.
A new law operates by virtue of the
fact that I have been crucified with Christ.
When I consciously depend on the Holy Spirit,
he will live his life through me.
Unless we get the idea that a Christian,
by the flesh, can live the Christian life,
Paul goes on in Romans 8.5 and
says, they that are after the flesh have
a mind for the things of the flesh.
They can't live a Christian life.
They that are after the Spirit, the things
of the Spirit, they are the ones that
can live a Christian life.
To be carnally minded, that is to live
by the all mind, is death.
We'll produce that which is dead.
But to live by the Spirit, to be
walking by means of the Spirit, is life
and peace.
That carnal mind is at war against God.
It is not subject to the law of
God.
Neither indeed can be.
And he's talking about the all mind in
the of God.
It is not subject to God's control, the
Spirit's control.
So then, they that are in the flesh
cannot please God.
But ye are not in the flesh, but
in the Spirit.
And so be it that the Spirit of
God dwell in you, and he most certainly
does, because he indwells.
If Christ be in you, the body is
dead because of sin, but the Spirit is
life because of righteousness.
If the Spirit of him that raised up
Jesus in the dead dwell in you, and
he most certainly does because of his indwelling
work, he that raised up Christ from the
dead shall make alive your mortal bodies.
That is, you'll live a life of righteousness
and godliness by his Spirit that dwelleth in
you.
Righteousness is the product of the Spirit working
his life out through a child of God.
But he cannot work his life out until
there is voluntary submission to his control.
A fact, you die.
Faith, the response to the fact.
Submission to the Spirit's control makes it possible
for the Spirit to live the life of
Christ through the child of God.
See you later.
This concludes Side B.
If you would like more information on the
cassettes available from Campus Crusade for Christ, write
to Tapes, Campus Crusade for Christ, San Bernardino,
California, 92414.